


the notebook thing

by fadewords



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: ........u know what fuck it. Why Not, Aromantic Mick Rory, Autistic Mick Rory, Autistic Ray Palmer, Gen, dunno if i should tag for that necessarily?, mick & ray are autistic in this as always but it's not like a Named Thing so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 15:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14772447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadewords/pseuds/fadewords
Summary: mick gets a notebook. ray gets weird.(or, the one where they exchange gifts & assumptions)





	the notebook thing

mick glared at the notebook not like it might bite him, but like he might want to bite it.

which he didn't. much. it was innocent in all this.

unlike ray, who’d walked up with a “you like writing, right?” and then shoved it at him and then a split-second later gone all bug-eyed half-yelling about science shit and whirled off to his lab before mick could chuck the thing back at him.

leaving mick standing glaring at it in the middle of the kitchen, with no idea where ray’d got it and even less what to do with it.

(certainly wasn't gonna write in the damn thing. not by hand. goddamned waste of time, only ever got him scrawled out lines and ripped paper and unreadable letters even when they _weren't_ struck through—and, always, stupid aching fingers.)

well. there was always the obvious.

he grabbed the heat gun off the table, took it and the book to the sink, dropped the book in, where it fell open, and reached down to press the pages flat, the better to watch them burn, and—

stopped.

brushed his fingers over the pages again. and one more time. and lowered the gun, still glaring.

too smooth to burn just yet.

-

in the end, he kept the stupid book. didn't write anything in it. used it as a paperweight, mostly. soft paperweight.

-

didn't tell haircut he'd kept it. didn't get to lie about it either, though, cause haircut never asked. probably forgot.

usually did.

but mick didn't.

-

weeks, months later maybe, they went on a mission around a stupid artist haircut wouldn't shut up about, and they ran into her, and she had this stupid stack of papers and on impulse mick swiped it. ostentatiously shuffled through the lot behind her back. grudgingly returned two when ray seemed to have a conniption at the sight of them. kept the other three.

-

examined them more closely later. one had teastains all over and nothing else. one had a printed map and a half-sketch on the back, lightly drawn, hard to see. the last had a dumbass poem and a complete sketch in the corner.

he pulled that one out, the beginnings of a plan setting like cement.

headed for ray’s room, having plotted exactly how to slip in and to leave the stupid thing and how to sneak back out, all undetected.

—ran into him, unexpectedly, as he rounded the corner just before the room. stalled. glared at him. goddamn bastard ruining a perfectly good plan. tried to sidestep at the same time ray did. glared more. tried to snap _outta my way_ , but the words went sideways in his 404 error of a brain and instead:

“you like drawings right?”

and he shoved the paper at him and stalked off.

-

when mick ran into him the next day, ray didn't say anything about the run-in. good. mick’d’ve burned his face off if he had.

-

couple days later, mick bumped into ray on his way to get breakfast. literally. he was heading in the door and rammed his shoulder into ray’s in the doorway, as he tried to exit while mick tried to enter.

mick shoved past him. “watch it.”

“sorry,” ray said, without looking at him, and scurried out empty-handed, usual plate still half-full on the counter.

mick rolled his eyes. amused himself with images of things exploding in ray’s lab, or about to explode—bout the only thing that could make him abandon his bacon.

(not that he actually had bacon, usually. but that wasn't the point. point was haircut liked his whole breakfast routine like mick liked the weight of a lighter in his pocket, so it was funny to see him haul off so quick.)

-

except mick never smelled smoke, and a few hours later ray rounded a corner, spotted him, made a weird face, and turned back around.

okay. not a science explosion thing then. stick-up-his-ass thing, instead.

whatever. not mick’s problem.

he’d done his piece. covered him four separate times on the latest mission—returning a priceless fourteenth-century artifact to the actual fourteenth century from the ripe old year of 1687—and hadn’t even tried to steal the loot. not even one of the dozens of tiny gemstones set in it.

wasn't about to play therapist in top of it all. let haircut stew. he’d get over it it.

(and if not, well. not mick’s problem either.)

-

he didn't get over it. couple more days passed and he kept finding excuses to leave the room when mick entered it. and avoiding him when he couldn’t escape. and shooting him weird looks when he thought mick wasn’t paying attention—as though he couldn’t feel the laser beam eyes from across the room.

stupid.

mick left him to it.

-

the next day, ray walked in the kitchen and said _hi_.

mick grunted in response. bout time.

-

but ray still tried to slip out when mick passed him in the library later that morning, and mick, thoroughly bored of the whole song and dance, said, “what.”

ray jumped. “i...didn’t say anything.”

“been avoiding me.”

“no, i—”

“why.”

“um,” ray said, reminding mick of a goat he’d come across once. the thing’d had a clump of grass hanging out its mouth and its head stuck in a fence, and eyes like fuckin golf balls.

“what.”

“nothing.”

“bull. s’it the dishes again? no one gives a damn about your little chore wheel.”

“chart,” ray corrected automatically. “it’s a chart. and it's not that.”

“then what?”

“i…” ray ran a hand through his hair, looked at his shoes. “the other day…”

the other day? what about the other day? which day? the entire point was ray’d been avoiding him, how could he have done something when—?

but they had interacted, sort of, just once. when ray’d said hi. but he'd been weird before that, and the last time they'd spoken’d been the mission…which, now mick thought about it, he'd also been kinda weird on. squirrely. quiet. so the last vaguely normal interaction...when ray’d interrupted his heist. which hadn't felt normal at all on mick’s end, but par for the course on ray’s, so—

“what about it.”

“nothing,” ray said quickly. “i just, uh.”

“pissed i stole it?”

“wh—no, of course not. we agreed light thievery’s—and it's not one of her known works, and believe me i know them all, i could recite them for you even, give you estimated production order, different phases, techniques, like, did you know—”

“haircut.”

he snapped his mouth shut. “right. sorry, not interesting.”

mick grunted. then, in case haircut decided to take that as an affirmative, forced out, “not the _time_.”

“...right. well, uh. i’m not mad. is the point.”

“if y’ain't pissed, why the stick?”

“stick?”

“up your ass.”

ray turned an amusing shade of red. “ah. because, well. i just...don’t feel that way about you? and i didn’t, i wasn’t expecting—”

“what way?”

ray stared. “that...way? the—” he frowned. opened his mouth. closed it again. “mick,” he said. “why’d you give me the poem?”

poem…? there had, he remembered vaguely, been one on the page, but— “gave you a _sketch_.” then, glaring, “why’d you give me the stupid book?”

 _book_? ray mouthed, brows furrowed. then, face clearing, “oh, that. because you write stuff, and you’re my friend?”

mick gestured, a swift, sharp motion indicating, _there you fucking go_.

“you—” ray said. “for friendship.”

that wasn’t remotely a sentence, and not _quite_ accurate, but mick grunted an affirmative anyway.

“oh,” he said, and made a sound that was almost a laugh, except it was too short, and too confused. and way too relieved for mick’s taste.

“the fuck you _think_ it was for?”

ray glanced away, then back. looked like the goat again. “uh. well. did you...read the poem?”

“sure.”

“closely?”

“why?”

“well. it was...sort of a love poem,” ray said, squishing all the words together in a jumble that sounded more like word-salad than _you—for friendship_ had.

mick took a second to decipher the salad, then said. “okay. and?”

“i mean—you gave me a love poem, man. what was i supposed to think?”

mick furrowed his brow—then unfurrowed it. “....oh.” no wonder he’d avoided him, if he'd thought it was some kinda—declaration, or whatever. mick would’ve, too. “you’re good-lookin, haircut, but—no.” not a chance in hell.

“i’m…?” mick couldn’t decide if ray looked flattered or just more confused than ever.

“i don’t...do that shit.” mick tried not to look unsettled at the very thought. mushy love stuff. with _haircut_.

ray frowned. “...right. almost forgot your. issues, there.”

“what issues.”

“your whole—homophobia thing. ‘his girlfriend's a guy’ and—whatever. the point is you didn't have to say it like _that_.”

mick ignored the first bit. if ray couldn’t recognize a joke when he heard one, that wasn't his problem. “like what.”

“like—?” ray spluttered. “like ‘no homo,’ or whatever, like the idea’s gross.”

well it _was_ , but— “not what i said.”

“you said—”

“romance,” he broke in. “i don’t do romance.”

“...what, at all?”

“no.”

ray looked dubious. “you’ve talked about women before.”

“sure.” and men, but if haircut didn’t remember any of those times, or his nickname for nate—or that he’d just called him good-lookin, for that matter—he wasn’t gonna complicate things any further. “but not everything’s romance.”

“...right,” ray said, blinking and going a bit red again. “...but. you write _romance_ novels?”

“that’s different,” mick said. writing wasn’t doing. writing was _miles_ from doing.

“...right,” ray said again, clearly not understanding at all. “okay.” then, a beat later, “...really, never?”

“just google ‘aro’ already.” mick turned to go.

“wait.”

he turned back around. “what.”

“so if you—i mean. since it wasn’t a uh. declaration. why did you…?”

ugh. this again. the whole point of shoving it at him and leaving had been to _not_ talk about it. “returning the favor, dumbass.”

ray blinked. “the...because of the notebook thing?”

“no, the other favor. _yeah_ the notebook thing.”

“...why, though?”

“you geeked out over that artist chick.”

“yeah, no, i get _that_. but why didn’t you just, i dunno, say thanks?”

mick could _hear_ the “like a normal person” ray had only just barely cut off the end of his sentence.

“didn’t feel like it. you done now?”

“yeah, yeah—course. just, uh. thanks. for the sketch. and the explanation.”

“whatever.” mick left.

-

ray stopped avoiding him. was a little weird for a day or so, but then when wasn’t he—and then that passed and he slipped back to his usual flavors of weird. the nerd ones.

and mick let the incident slip from his mind.

-

several weeks later, ray tossed something at his head. mick caught it out of the air on reflex, but fumbled and dropped it to the ground. bent, picked it back up, looked at it properly.

it was a hat. a soft hat. specifically, a soft hat in very particular colors. two different green stripes, a white, a gray, and a black. in that order.

mick frowned at it. then at ray, who was grinning.

“i googled! took a couple tries—got a lot of bow-and-arrow stuff at first. then some...really weird fanfiction about a buddy of mine that i’m never gonna unsee. but, you know, eventually--” he gestured to the hat.

 _congrats_ , mick wanted to say, and, _whaddya want, a medal_ , and _do i fuckin look like a hat guy_. didn’t say any of them. just kept frowning at the hat.

“gideon made it.”

“...right.”

ray’s grin slipped. “i can have her un-make it, if you want? or, you know, there’s your gun. if that’s more fun.”

mick, who _had_ been entertaining the idea of setting the thing on fire, promptly squashed that dream. couldn’t do it now ray’d said it. might think he was doing it _cause_ he’d said it, and fuck if mick was gonna have that. but what to do instead…?

he deliberated. ran the back of his hand over the hat, which was softer than he’d realized. very soft. hmm…

a moment’s more deliberation, then, “...nah,” he said. then, glancing up at the ceiling, “thanks…”

“you’re wel—”

“...gideon.”

“you’re welcome mr. rory,” gideon said, obviously amused.

“—hey!”

mick half-grinned, making sure to stretch his mouth twice as wide as usual so it’d actually show up a bit, and sauntered out of the room.

at the edge of the doorway, he added, “you too, haircut.”

and bounced before ray could respond.

-

he resolutely didn’t wear the thing. not even once. not for ages.

but then one day they were set to remove a mercedes—with passengers—from the ice age, and, well, the ice age was _cold_ , and shit as his ears were he _did_ want to keep them, and a hat was a hat was a hat—except when it was one of the awful ones the captain’d passed round, all sharp seams and itchy elastic and fraying tag, so—

he retreated to his room. pulled the aro hat from the organized chaos. jammed it on his head. grinned. soft. no seams, no elastic no _tag_. just soft.

good.

-

he hustled back to the bridge, ignored the odd looks, the delighted one from ray—made a mental note to get him alone soon and tell him to keep his trap shut, cause fuck only knew if he’d _actually_ got good information in his search, and mick didn’t need him spreading bullshit to the rest of the crew—and slapped on his listening face.

they had a job to do.


End file.
